Ottawa Citizen » bikinghttp://ottawacitizen.com
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 18:04:00 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://0.gravatar.com/blavatar/034e689d25278f80f8281f2c424607c3?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.png » bikinghttp://ottawacitizen.com
Ottawa's 'Disneyland' for bike riders set to open this month (with video)http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/all-weather-disney-land-for-bike-riders-set-for-february-opening
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/all-weather-disney-land-for-bike-riders-set-for-february-opening#commentsFri, 26 Dec 2014 23:03:44 +0000http://ottawacitizen.com/?p=420555]]>BMX and mountain bikers of all ages and skill levels can look forward to having a 53,000-square-foot refuge from the winter cold when a local entrepreneur opens the city’s only indoor bike park in the next couple of weeks.

“It’s going to be like a Disneyland of ramps inside,” promises Jordan Bonifacio, ramp designer of Epic Indoor Bike Park at 110 Bentley Ave. in Nepean.

“You’ll basically see bikes flying around everywhere,” he said. “There’s going to be an upper level track, which allows you to ride your bike up to a second level and circle around the whole building.”

Entrepreneur and park owner Lin Zhang says she wants to create an all-season haven for the city’s biking community. “We have very cold weather here, and right now there’s no place to go to ride,” she told the Citizen, which spoke to those involved in the project earlier this winter.

Construction began in November. The site is expected to open by month’s end.

More than 1,800 people have so far “liked” the park’s Facebook page.

“It’s definitely needed,” says Jeremy Maisonneuve, a technician at The Cyclery store on Bank Street who used to race BMX bikes, and still rides recreationally. He said he’ll check out Epic as soon as it’s open. “There’s a pretty big scene here in Ottawa, a lot of BMXers and urban mountain bikers. Now there’s nowhere to go in winter. Once the snow comes, you put your bike away.”

Maisonneuve says he travels at least twice a month in winter to Le Taz, a huge indoor skateboard, rollerblade and bike park in Montreal. “Everybody wants to keep on point throughout the winter.”

The $1-million Ottawa project almost didn’t get off the ground. In October, a few days before construction was to begin, Zhang’s architect, who designed several elements of the park, decided he could not build the ramps.

“I was very disappointed, I was very upset,” says Lin, who was at Joyride 150 at the time — Toronto’s indoor bike park. “And then I saw this little kid.”

A three-year-old child, Rydan Bonifacio, was expertly navigating the jumps at the Toronto park. Zhang approached the child’s father, Jordan Bonifacio, to chat, and it turned out he was a talented ramp-builder and architecture technology graduate from Fanshawe College. Bonifacio has worked for companies that designed and built BMX ramps in parks in Cambridge and Kitchener. He’s also built recreational backyard ramps.

“I was just kind of thinking it would be amazing to have (an) opportunity to be able to just work inside and build a huge park,” Bonifacio said. “Then I come across Lin and then it gets dropped in my hands and I’m kind of in awe, I didn’t really know what to think at first.”

The pair agreed to work together.

Bonifacio, who had a full-time job, worked until 4 a.m. every day on the design, Zhang said. Bonifacio has been transforming the U-shaped building into a massive two-level biking wonderland for both BMX and mountain bikers. “The jumps on the main level are going to come up almost up to the height of the second-level tracks, and when you’re on the second-level track you’re going to feel like people are coming up towards you . . . you can almost reach out and grab them,” Bonifacio said.

Zhang says the park will be “cottage” themed, with tall outer slices of trees covered in bark lining the walls of the main entrance.

BMX riders Emile Otis and Tyler Buller try out a new section of the 50,000-plus square foot park earlier this winter.

“I’ve been to a lot of bike parks in my past that have just been thrown together,” said Bonifacio, an avid biker himself. “We wanted a space that’s nice for families to be able to bring their kids and for adults and young adults to be able to have fun.”

There are no building codes specifically for ramps, Bonifacio says, but the park had to meet the basic structural integrity requirements made of every building in Ontario. Bonifacio said he exceeded the building code to ensure the ramps were “bomb proof.” For example, building codes require a 2×6 beam for every 16 inches when constructing floors, but he has placed 2×6 beams every six inches on the ramps, and also used two layers of plywood rather than one to ensure maximum support. “Basically, these things are going to be stronger than any house floor or wall that would use a normal building code application.”

Owner Lin Zhang, left, and designer Jordan Bonifacio are the forces behind a new indoor BMX bike park in Nepean.

]]>http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/all-weather-disney-land-for-bike-riders-set-for-february-opening/feed0010215-11942708.JPG-1227_epic-W.jpgtheeveningstammerBMX riders Emile Otis and Tyler Buller try out a new section of the 50,000-plus square foot park earlier this winter.Owner Lin Zhang, left, and designer Jordan Bonifacio are the forces behind a new indoor BMX bike park is under construction in Nepean.Reevely: Pedestrian-friendly rules not a priority for ministryhttp://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/reevely-transportation-ministry-slow-to-buy-into-pedestrian-friendly-ideas
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/reevely-transportation-ministry-slow-to-buy-into-pedestrian-friendly-ideas#commentsTue, 16 Sep 2014 23:43:43 +0000http://ottawacitizen.com/?p=331438]]>You’ve got to stop thinking of roads as only places for cars, the Ontario Public Health Association has told the provincial government.

The group sent a letter to the transportation ministry this month with some very polite thoughts on revisions to its rules on pedestrian crossings. The health association’s main thought is that those rules are misconceived. People need to walk to be healthy and we’ve been going about roads wrong for decades.

Crossings (at intersections with lights, at stop signs, at roundabouts, at push-button crosswalks, at “uncontrolled” intersections on side streets, you name it) are the subject of the 15th book in the 18-volume Ontario Traffic Manual, and Book 15 is 150 pages of definitions, graphs, schematics and explanations. Such as: “A stop line must be solid white retro reflective line between 30 cm and 60 cm wide. The stop line must extend across the approach lanes from the right pavement edge to the directional dividing line or median, or, in the case of one-way streets, to the left pavement edge …” And so on.

The health association praises some improvements — more attention to features that help people with disabilities, for instance. Then they get into it.

“The primary principle of Book 15 appears to be to not interrupt motor vehicle flow unless necessary,” executive director Pegeen Walsh wrote. Rules based on the idea that moving cars and trucks is Job One will inevitably lead to some bad results.

For instance, the Ministry of Transportation is sticking with the idea that the most important factor in deciding where people should be helped to cross roads is where they’re already doing it without help. “This overreliance on existing pedestrian counts is analogous to assessing the need for a motor vehicle bridge by counting the number of cars that drive over a river; no facility means no activity!” the letter says.

Second, rules about not putting too many crossings too close together — lest, heaven forbid, traffic be stopped too frequently — get in the way if local authorities want to make their own decisions about putting in lights or crosswalks based on other things. Like, say, clear public demand.

Also, there’s a passage that tells designers to resist painting crosswalks with “ladder” stripes (the default is just two parallel white lines) because they really catch drivers’ eyes and we want to save them for places where a lot of pedestrians cross. But, er, it’s OK to not bring pedestrians to drivers’ attention if there aren’t as many of them.

The provincial health association makes constructive suggestions, recognizing that just now nobody is going to burn the traffic manual. The thing might mention that the point of good road design is to keep everyone safe, for instance, not just to encourage safe motoring. There’s more, deeper in the technical weeds, about crossings on low-speed side streets and how to make things safer when people walk on higher-speed roads in rural areas.

In Ottawa, the city kicked off a massive revision of our transportation and land-use plans a couple of years ago with a speech from Peel Region’s medical officer of health, Dr. David Mowat. We sit on our arses in traffic for too many hours a day and it’s killing us with diabetes and heart disease, he told city council bluntly. Overall, we get as much exercise recreationally as we ever did. But compare life in 2014 to life in 1954 and you’ll find fewer of us walk to work or labour as part of our jobs. That’s where we’ve lost our physical activity.

One thing the city can do is make walking and biking and whatnot more appealing, so people choose them over driving just a little more often, Mowat said. Small changes add up. But cities can’t do these things if the province forbids them.

Planners here had to contort crazily this year to redefine a spot in Lowertown where two streets almost but don’t quite meet as an intersection so they could put in a crosswalk for kids walking to three nearby schools. It’s bizarre.

The newer rules, which everyone agrees are an improvement even if they don’t go far enough, should be finalized by the end of November and will kick in as soon after that as the legislature passes a law to put them into effect.

]]>http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/reevely-transportation-ministry-slow-to-buy-into-pedestrian-friendly-ideas/feed0cross043.jpgdavidreevelyRunaway car wheel strikes cyclist, sends him to hospitalhttp://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/runaway-car-wheel-strikes-cyclist-sends-him-to-hospital
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/runaway-car-wheel-strikes-cyclist-sends-him-to-hospital#commentsThu, 21 Aug 2014 21:39:06 +0000http://ottawacitizen.com/?p=310360]]>A 42-year-old man was transported to hospital Thursday with injuries to his left arm, shoulder and hip after being thrown from his bike when he was struck by a runaway car wheel on Riverside Drive.

Paramedics said they responded to a call for an injured cyclist around 3:30 p.m. They said the man was in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries when he arrived at hospital.

Police are investigating the incident.

]]>http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/runaway-car-wheel-strikes-cyclist-sends-him-to-hospital/feed0112495-ottawa-ont-april-1-2013-stock-pix-for-files-ambulance-paramedic-ot-2onlyandrewnMother wants answers after children hit by cyclisthttp://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/mother-searches-for-answers-after-children-hit-by-cyclist
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/mother-searches-for-answers-after-children-hit-by-cyclist#commentsThu, 31 Jul 2014 12:19:17 +0000http://ottawacitizen.com/?p=290972]]>Parks Canada has installed speed bumps and signage on the pavement between the Bytown Museum and the Rideau Canal locks to reduce cyclists’ speed there to eight kilometres an hour.

The move came late last week, just days after a speeding cyclist struck one of Sonia Elliott’s children, knocking a second child off the pathway. Both children were taken to hospital after the incident.

Parks Canada got involved because the paved area is part of the federal lands along the Rideau Canal. The area is not an official bike path, like those managed by the NCC and the City of Ottawa.

However, it is connected to the Ottawa River bike path, making it a busy area for both pedestrians and bicycles.

No one knew who was in charge there and what could be done about this, like it never happened before.

Elliott said she screamed “get out of the way!” to her children as she watched the cyclist zip around a blind corner early last week.

The young man tried dragging his leg across the ground to slow down, but it was too late. He began swerving, lost control of his bike, and slammed into them, she said.

He later revealed to Elliott that his bike had no brakes.

Elliott said her children, Moses and Knox, were hit so hard by the bike that they flew into a metal railing. It was over in seconds.

“It was chaos. My heart was just in my throat,” Elliott said. “I just didn’t know what to do. I was panicking. I thought they were dead.”

People who witnessed the incident came rushing to help.

Both children were seriously hurt. Their heads were swollen and knees scraped. Moses was badly bruised. He had cuts on his cheek, nose and was bleeding profusely.

Elliott said she and her sons were taken to Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Doctors ordered a CT scan for Moses, whose head was so swollen that doctors were concerned about fractures.

“It looked like he’d been run over by a car,” Elliott said. “He was just mangled.”

The next day, Elliott said, she called the police but was told that because it happened on National Capital Commission land, police had no jurisdiction over the path.

Elliott said what’s most disturbing is that no one has taken responsibility for the incident, adding that “there’s a lot of confusion.”

“No one knew who was in charge there and what could be done about this, like it never happened before,” Elliott said. She added that she’s filed a formal complaint with the NCC.

Parks Canada told Elliott that temporary speed bumps were being installed and said it is considering permanent rumble strips to encourage cyclists to slow down.

But Elliott wants cyclists to be held accountable. And she questions whether pedestrians and cyclists can share the path. For now, she is hoping for enforceable rules to make paths safer and for signs with emergency numbers.

She said the boys are recovering and she hopes there’s no lasting psychological trauma.

Elliott said she’s feels lucky that her kids are still alive, but “if people know there aren’t any consequences, nothing will change.”

]]>http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/mother-searches-for-answers-after-children-hit-by-cyclist/feed0073014-0731cycling_04.JPG-POS1407301255546646-33461889-0731cycling_04-W.jpgonlyandrewnA clever solution to a dumb policy problem in Lowertownhttp://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/a-clever-solution-to-a-dumb-policy-problem-in-lowertown
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/a-clever-solution-to-a-dumb-policy-problem-in-lowertown#commentsTue, 14 Jan 2014 20:38:51 +0000http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/?p=118731]]>Problem: In Lowertown, just north of Rideau Street, north-south Chapel Street dead-ends just before it reaches east-west Beausoleil Drive. Lots of people cross Beausoleil, on foot and on bikes, to get to Chapel and head on south. But as much as the locals would like a stop sign to make those crossings easier, there’s no official intersection because the two streets don’t quite meet, and the city isn’t allowed to put in a stop sign mid-block.